Midlife Crisis at Age 35
by estuesday
Summary: Draco is going bald, and Harry is going mad, and will no one think of the hate sex?


Draco Is Going Bald and Harry Is Going Mad and Will No One Think of the Hate Sex?: Midlife Crisis at Age 35

Five strands of palest gold glinted accusingly back at him, wrapped cruelly around the grey spikes of metal. It was inconceivable that this could be happening. A tragedy of the highest order.

"I don't know how you're doing it, but you have got to stop this campaign of hateful jealousy against my hair," Draco demanded, waving the brush.

Harry looked up from his position sprawled over the back of the sofa where he'd fallen in his evil, vindictive, incredibly suspicious laughter when Draco had first begun his tirade. They stared off, Harry's eyes twinkling in a way that indicated he'd spent entirely too much time around Dumbledore in their formative years. Harry huffed in a few breaths and smiled in a deceptively helpless manner.

"Draco, I had nothing to do with your current hair los—"

"Lies! Slanderous lies! You, you, hair murderer! Shampoo poisoner! You envying, embittered—" Harry sputtered into laughter again. Sometime during the passing of their twenties, Draco had somehow lost his touch, he realized mournfully.

He'd gone soft, spent too much time on fraternization and receiving fantastic blow jobs and not enough on verbally eviscerating Harry. Harry'd gotten too used to him, no longer realizing when he should be properly cowed and humble before Draco's obviously frightening and ferocious rage. Harry'd somehow missed that that ridiculous, bubbling laughter was _not_ the appropriate response.

Draco crossed his arms and channeled the icy anger of generations of Malfoys and Blacks that had come before. Harry's laughter trailed off.

"Draco," he said, moving around the couch and putting his hands on Draco's shoulders, sliding them around his back and pressing close, breathing, "Draco, you're not going bald."

"The evidence is in the hairbrush," Draco sulked. "This was five this _hour_. It's impending doom."

"You're not doomed." Harry smiled at Draco like he'd gone daft. Him, when Harry was the one spouting sheer stupidity!

Really, Draco should have let Crabbe and Goyle dip Harry into that organic dissolvent that had resulted from one of Longbottom's few potions that hadn't dissolved or exploded the cauldron entirely in their third year. Then Draco wouldn't have to face that smarmy, besotted look staring back at him, not even a caring hand on the ass anymore.

"It's not a big deal." Harry ignored Draco's squawk of indignation, speaking over him. "What would you do if I lost all of my hair, or, or gained a few pounds?" Harry asked, expression a tender mixture of arrogance and affection.

"I would toss you out with the rubbish," Draco replied automatically.

"I'm sure you—" Harry stopped, oscillating between surprise and unexpected betrayal. As if it weren't perfectly obvious Draco was with Harry for his somewhat dubious attraction to what few semi-decent physical attributes Harry possessed. Without them, what was the point? There was slumming, and there was _slumming_.

"And don't think I'll be letting you alone with those buttered scones I baked now. I see your secret plan. Make me lose my hair and glory, and then you can pack on all the pounds you want. I see through you, and don't think your attempts to trap me in some farce of an uneven relationship will force my hand into giving you more than one, maybe two of the scones. Don't make me sic Hermione on you. She loves me now that I've given Ron those season tickets and stopped calling her mudblood to her face."

Harry's face was red and he open and shut his mouth several times, only air escaping from between his lips. Finally, he said, "Hermione hates you."

"Nonsense, she loves me. She left that awkward dinner together and took Ron with her so we could have sex."

"She left because you called her a bushy-haired, feathers-for-brains pseudo intellectual harpy with delusions of semi-competence."

Draco was secretly pleased Harry remembered the entire exchange. "Yes, it was an address of fondness."

"She called you a snake-skinned, cold-blooded bastard!"

"See, she remembered how much I love snakes."

"And, and," Harry looked lost. "And we're _in_ a relationship you, you wanker. What do you think this is?"

Draco took a moment to think about it. No new answers seemed to present themselves. "Really hot hate sex?"

"We live together!"

"So we can have really hot hate sex more conveniently."

"For the better part of the past decade!"

"Because we've been having really hot hate sex for a long time," Draco explained slowly.

"I don't believe this!" Harry threw up his hands, backing up several steps and bumping into their coffee table. Draco realized that Harry was suddenly, inexplicably angry now, barely catching himself mid-fall and stumbling around the corner, heading swiftly for the bedroom.

Draco wondered if this would be a night he would spend on the couch, when he heard the sudden and distinct sound of Harry throwing down the suitcases from the top shelf of the closet, not even bothering with his wand.

Draco strolled to the bedroom door, peeking his head past the doorframe. Harry was grabbing random pieces of clothes—two sweaters, a pullover, a green and yellow tie that was Draco's _school tie_, one pair of grey slacks—and a sharp suspicion swept over Draco.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"God, I should have known," Harry muttered angrily to himself, throwing in another sweater. "Ron and Hermione tried to tell me. 'You're young,' they said. 'Are you out of your bloody mind?' they said. And just when they're finally resigning themselves to you being around forever—"

"Wait," said Draco, "Are you trying to tell me that you want really hot hate sex with someone else?"

Harry's strangled response made no sense.

"What do you mean you don't want hate sex with me?" Draco demanded. "This is the balding thing, isn't it? Oh, sure, you're full of hot air about how you'll shag me anyway, but then next thing you turn around and say I don't do it for you anymore. Next you'll say that suitcase," Draco pointed an accusing finger, "means you want to leave, which we both know you're too weak to do, because that infernal muggle picture contraption belongs to me, as does the king-sized Temper-Impeding mattress, and while you may have bought the ingredients, those delicious, delicious buttered scones were made by me and so thus belong to me—" Harry's eyes widened as Draco continued to speak and walked toward him, "—and who would bake for you and also keep you from getting fat and ugly?"

Draco poked Harry in the chest. "You would be lost without me and my awesome hate sex, even if I did lose my hair." Harry's body went from tense as bludgers under his finger to trembling, and Draco watched in confusion as Harry put a hand over his face and walked to the bed.

Harry shoved the suitcases off the covers with his free hand, clothes and cases tumbling to the floor, and he lay down, still shaking slightly. He asked of his hand or the ceiling, his voice quavering with wisps of anger and amusement, "Why did no one ever tell me that my boyfriend was completely, barking mad?"

"Boyfriend is demeaning," Draco sniffed, "And you're one to talk. At least I'm not so daft that normal people would suspect massive head trauma."

Harry spread his fingers and his narrowed eyes glared through the gaps at Draco. "And why didn't you ever mention that 'really hot hate sex' is code for romantic relationship in your twisted vocabulary?"

"Because it doesn't when we're fighting," said Draco, crawling onto the bed awkwardly and straddling Harry's legs. "It means we're going to have really hot hate sex." He moved Harry's hand and stared at his lips.

"Most people call it make-up sex, Draco." Harry's lips were very red and slightly swollen, as though he'd been biting them.

"Most people don't have to put up with a—" Harry finally got with the picture, pulling Draco down to kiss him.

"You're an arse," said Harry, rolling them over on the bed. "And a terrible liar." He licked Draco's neck. "You're horrible."

"Yes, yes, whatever," said Draco, struggling with the stupid muggle belt Harry insisting on wearing as though robes weren't perfectly acceptable day wear. Harry was the worst wizard ever, and Draco finally got the belt off and flung it to the side. "Having really hot hate sex now."

"If you keep calling it that, I'm going to start calling it 'love-making.'" Harry's voice had gone smug again, but Draco was unable to take back the instinctive freeze of horror. Definitely horror. Harry looked surprised, and his tone somehow managed to hit a new plane of arrogance.

"You'd like that," said Harry, almost disbelieving, voice low. He nearly tore one of the buttons of Draco's robe as he pulled it open.

"Careful," Draco admonished, but he knew the damage was already done.

"Can I make a confession?" Harry breathed into Draco's ear. "I didn't put hair thinner in your shampoo—" and Harry licked along the shell of Draco's ear, before breathing another warm puff of air as he spoke his next words: "But I know who did."

"WHAT?" Draco demanded. "WHO? I WILL HAVE VENGEANCE. THERE WILL BE BLOOD-LETTINGS AND ANCIENT SACRIFICIAL RITES TO APPEASE MY HONOR."

Harry laughed down at him, the wanker. "Shut up, Draco," he said, stupid grin stretching his face in an unattractive way. "We're having really hot hate sex."

After due consideration, Draco decided the matter could be put off until morning. But when morning came, the repercussions would be both swift and terrible. . . . After even more really hot hate sex. And coffee. And maybe a buttered scone, though only one, because no matter what Harry might intend, Draco wasn't going to let either of them grow fat and ugly and old together. He still was enough himself that he would kill them both first.

He might have given up house elves and mudblood-baiting and dating people who were attractive _and_ intelligent, but he would give up hot hate sex over his dead, well-shagged body.


End file.
